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The Problem. Paying for the education is one of the largest financial outlays that most families face. I went to Washington & Lee for undergraduate and law school in the 1960s for $2,000 a year. The sticker price is now over $60,000 a year. The cost has gone up 30-fold in 50 years. According to […]

I thought you would find this summary of the new tax bill interesting and challenging. It will give us a new set of forms and regulations to deal with. Please call if you have questions. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) became effective in December 2017. This is a summary of that bill from the 2018 […]

Dear Friends, Paying for School I have developed a specialty of the financial planning that goes into paying education. Benjamin Franklin commented that a penny saved is a penny earned. A more current rendition of that is that a penny saved is about $1.40 when we factor in the income tax costs that are avoided […]

Thousands of people have lost millions of dollars and their personal information to tax scams. Scammers use the regular mail, telephone, or email to set up individuals, businesses, payroll and tax professionals. Visit the IRS website for further information: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/tax-scams-consumer-alerts

I hope this finds you well and enjoying the fall season. Can I help you with anything? Maybe: Help with tax problems that you have or that friends or family have. I value referrals. Financial planning including paying for school. I wrote an article that outlines the problems and some of the solutions to out-of-control […]

Accounting Today notes the following significant changes in the way IRS collects taxes: PRIVATE COLLECTORS. IRS is starting to use a group of four private debt collectors (CBE Group, Conserve, Performat and Pioneer) to collect any tax accounts that the IRS is no longer chasing. In light of the serious problems that IRS has with […]

What are the chances of being audited? IRS examined 0.6% of all tax returns filed in calendar year 2015, about 0.7% of all individual tax returns were audited and 1.1% of corporate returns. The likelihood of audit increases as AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) increases. Thirty-seven percent of the individual audits were triggered by earned income […]

We are bombarded with advertisements from JK Harris, TaxMasters, Roni Deutch, and a host of other tax relief firms, asking that we let them help with IRS audit and collection problems. Many give examples of tax debts being settled for pennies on the dollar. They imply that your case will be handled by former IRS […]

The IRS has long had a voluntary disclosure policy which enables taxpayers who want to clean up problems that expose them to criminal prosecution to make a voluntary disclosure through the Criminal Investigation Division and to negotiate an agreement under which their problems can be settled without criminal prosecution. In recent years that policy has […]

August 7th, 2013 I recently saw an interview of Steve Harper, a former Kirkland & Ellis lawyer (a big international law firm) who recently published a book titled The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis. Points made in this book are: There are only jobs in the industry for approximately one-half of the lawyers who […]